Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Winter Report from the (other) Land of Milk and Honey


Yesterday I just celebrated 7 months in site and in two weeks it will be 10 months in Paraguay. It is winter here, and while 40 degrees all the time is not very cold for Boston, MA standards, for those of you have ever spent a forty degree winter without heat, in a cement building, you know what I’m talking about. Luckily, I have discovered that my mosquito net actually doubles as a wind-break/insulator, so at least at night, when it does occasionally frost, I do not freeze as well. Now, just because the only warm spot in the entire country is my bed, that doesn’t mean that I have been sitting in for the past month. Well, at least not before sundown. Here’s what’s been up this winter:

LONG STORY SHORT:
Community Integration: people make fun of me now, which means I’m one of the family.
Women’s Commissions: creating sustainable relationships between the commission and the PYan department of agricultural extension, working with my ladies on pig projects, needs assessment, and commission’s internal rules.
Jaeger Farms: the garden is flourishing, my field, newly renovated, has some seeds in the ground, the cat is alive, and the worms are multiplying. All but the cat are being used as demonstrations of more sustainable agricultural practices and have inspired experimentation in community members’ gardens.
One-on-One Agriculture Work: playing in the garden with my comission ladies—making homemade insect repellents, trying out double-digging, and even one worm bin!!
CNA: that time that I had to write a 10 page community report in Spanish after only speaking Guarani for 10 months.

LONG STORY LONG:
Community Integration:  I decided to celebrate my 7 months in site by making gnocchi with my next door neighbor Mirna. Mirna and her husband Herminio work and house-sit on the dairy farm next door to me, and Mirna has come to be one of my closest friends in site. While gnocchi is a popular dish (Argentinian influence) in some parts of Paraguay, and I actually learned how to make gnocchi from a Paraguayan, it hasn’t quite made it out my community. Mirna and I had a good time prepping the dough, trying to roll the little dumplings just the right way, and of course, trying to communicate cooking instructions in Guarani. I really need to learn the word for bowl. While I was expecting that it would just be me, Mirna, and Herminio for dinner, it turned out that another family dropped in to say hi and drink some mate.  After some rounds of mate, Mirna loaded up the plates (Rosana and Marcial, the other couple, were actually trying to sneak out at this point). The verdict: Herminio and Marcial were not fans. Rosana may have been faking that she liked it. In fact, Marcial only needed one bite to start giving me shit, “Come on Herminio, next we’ll meet at my house and make some REAL Paraguayan food.” At first, I was disgruntled. How many times have I eaten cow legs, cow stomachs, pig innards, pig fat fried in cow fat, soups that have been seasoned with a cup full of oil and cup full of salt, and taken it with a smile? Pretty much every day until I moved into my own house. But then, after a little bit of reflection, I realized that this was the first time that anyone had ever hard-core made fun of me, Paraguayan style. I’m becoming one of the family.
NOTE: I actually like cow stomach! And the pig fat fried in cow fat was pretty good too with some hot sauce. The resourcefulness here doesn’t stop at repurposing.

Women’s Commissions: While I wrote another more in depth blog about the three women’s commissions in my site, I figured I would mention it here since I have been spending a lot of time working with them recently. It is always so exciting for me to see the women in my site advocating for their specific needs and the empowerment that comes through their work in the commission. I just love spending time with these feisty women. I have recently had some success supporting a relationship between one women’s commission and the PYan department of agriculture extension (DEAG). While I can only be in site for 2 years, the DEAG is a local resource that will always be at these women’s fingertips. Currently the commission, the DEAG, and I are collaborating on a pig project for increased food security and financial income. I am also working with a second commission as they make their “ground rules” (constitution, internal rules etc.) and figure out their goals (needs assessment and project development).

Jaeger Farms: Aka my demo plot, my garden, my worms, and my cat. My garden is both a “show garden” where I demonstrate mulching, compost, companion planting etc. and a “therapy garden.” It’s an angry day when I’m thinning. The work from the days when I am not up to my PC-volunteer-best pays off on the better days, especially when the women from my community come to visit. It’s easier to get the gardeners in my community (aka the women) to try out mulching their beds (etc) when they see a physical example of how to mulch and the results in terms of increased vegetable yield. Also, I get to eat fresh kale on a daily basis.

July, apparently, is when everyone starts disking their fields. Even though August is really the major planting season, some early varieties of corn and debatably beans and sweet potatoes are ready to go in the ground now. Watching everyone prep their fields I decided the time had come for some major renovations. With a little help from Herminio, my little field, 3x7 meters, is now about 15x15 meters. We prepared the earth by hand with hoes because the tractor could not get in to my backyard without destroying the trees. With any luck, my corn and beans will grow (!) and I will get a chance to model some methods for soil recuperation/erosion prevention.

When I headed out to site, I swore that the only pets I would have in Paraguay would be worms. Worms??? California red worms are special earthworms that turn your food scraps into worm castings/miracle grow. You also have the joy of telling people “I have worms!!” and watching them look towards your stomach in horror. While the worms aren’t originally from PY, they can’t survive outside the worm-bin (and become invasive worm monsters) and they are much easier to maintain than compost (which has to be turned). Turns out, the cat is a great companion specie for worm-farming, because she protects the worms from mice and other furry problems. As a pet, I love the cat very much, appreciate that she has never used my carrot bed as a litter box, and enjoy laughing at her residual fear of motorcycles (she came to me in a bag that had fallen off the back of one these vehicles).

One-on-One Agricultural Work: One of my favorite ways to build relationships with the people in my community, spread the good word of sustainable agricultural practices, practice my guarani, and mooch off of Paraguayan’s honey combs (world’s best snack ever) is through one-on-one hands-on agricultural education. I show to up to a family’s house to share the cup (of yerba mate) and through conversation I find out about some pest problems in the garden, an interest in worm bins or compost—that they’ve heard about, but don’t quite know how to make—etc. Then we set a date, I come back, and we make homemade repellants or whatnot together. In these mini-projects, we are using local resources (be it leaves from a certain type of tree for the repellant, a cracked bucket for the worm bin), I am passing on the knowledge in a more fun way than a lecture, and the process of working together and follow-up helps me and the family get to know each other better.

When I originally came to the community, it became pretty clear that the reason the original 16 families invited me to site was to work with them on a modern bathroom project. While I quickly began to feel that these women were my family, my home base in the community, I was frustrated that at first there wasn’t enthusiasm for what I could offer about agriculture. The rest of the members of the community were a little confused as to why a random American was suddenly living in their village in the first place. These mini-projects have helped me learn a little more about what the community needs agriculturally (what do people already know, what subjects are they asking about, what people are interested in learning new/different techniques). I am hoping to use the information I’ve gathered to direct a small series of more formal classes (that will allow more people to access what I have to offer) and the relationships I’ve built, to among other things, fill the seats.

One of my favorite “mini-projects” so far has been the worm bin that I built with Na Rafaela. She is an amazing gardener, a bit of a gardener perfectionist: she rarely allows anyone but herself to step on its hallowed ground. She had visited my garden, liked what she saw, and asked me “so how are those worms doing?” which is about as direct as it will get here for “I want the worms!” We built the worm bin out a cracked bucket. When I started explaining how the worms like food scraps, she got so excited, that she announced in her boisterous way, “That’s it! My kids don’t even like vegetables. From now on, I am making salad and one half goes to me and the other half goes to the worms!! One tomato for me, one tomato for the worms.”

CNA: or the Community Needs Assessment, is a report that I have to write about the agricultural (etc) situation in my community and opportunities for change. During my first few months in site, my main focus was getting to know the community, and this document is a summary of that work. The idea is that I will write this report, present my “findings” to community members, and leave the document for them to use (it will probably live at the school). The document will include ideas for potential projects that I culled from door-to-door interviews, contact info for resources for funding, etc.  I am really glad that I learned how to make a needs assessment report, since it seems like a pretty basic requirement for learning about and working with any new group at any job. It was, however, a bit of an adventure to fit the concept census, reports, and needs assessment to the Paraguayan reality. And all of that with my baby Guarani skills. I couldn’t just hand a form to check like the U.S. census, and, for example, it only took six months to properly communicate to the DEAG that I wanted them to show me their agricultural census results for my community and to actually receive them. 

Language Gaffs


Between trying to learn (and constantly use) two new languages, there are bound to be lots of gaffs. Doesn’t help that a lot of completely unrelated guarani words sound exactly the same (in Hebrew, these words would actually be related!!) and disaster can occur when you switch the –a ending to an –o ending in Spanish. Here are some mistakes that I always fall into (much to the amusement of the PYans) and a couple that I’ve so far managed to avoid. This doesn’t include all the times I pronounce the right words funny or try and talk to people in guarani and its clear from their expression that they just have no idea what I’m trying to say.

Emily’s Mistakes:
·         azada=hoe, azado= barbeque
o   In response to asking how I would prepare my demo-plot, since I couldn’t get a tractor in: “with a barbeque!” (everyone seemed very willing to help after that).
·         pala= shovel, palo= stick.
o   “I’m staking my tomatoes with some shovels I found in the road!”
·         (nde) puerka=(you’re) a pig, common response to a kid wetting their pants, eating their boogers etc, puerkeza= a curse
o   Me in an argument with a two year old over who is grosser, within hearing distance of her mother, “Nde puerkeza!!!” = you are a curse (on humankind).
·         ambo’a= I lay an egg, ambo’e=I teach
o   being an agricultural volunteer sometimes means I teach people how to increase their chickens’ egg production, and sometimes I just do the job myself
·         ajahu=I shower, ajuhu= I find, I run into/meet someone.
o   “I showered Vicenta at Rafaela’s house the other day!”
·         pira= fish, pire= peel, skin
o   “I really love to eat grilled skin!”
·         Casarol (pronounced “casserole” )= large soup pot vs. azadera=the type of pan you would make a casserole in.
o   I usually figure out this gaff when the wrong thing is handed to me.
·         Ambochyryry= to fry/sauté something, achyryry= I am fry[ing]
o   The recipe for pizza, “I fry myself…vegetables.”
·         Chortsito= shorts, chorizo = sausage
o   “What, your boyfriend doesn’t like when you wear sausages???”

Common Mistakes (some of these are a bit R rated)
·         Tembi’u = food, tembu’i = small penis
o   Figure it out.
·         Che roy= I’m cold (this is that tricky guttural “y” that most American guarani speakers fudge with a “u” sound), che re’u=I want to eat you (the same here double entendre here as in the states).
o   I usually avoid this one by sticking to hoysa= it’s cold out.
·         Haku! = it’s hot out, haku (with antecedent) = horny
o   In the 100 degree summer, trying to complain about the heat, “Che haku!!!!!!” = I’m horny!!!!!
·         Ipora= it’s good, fine, che pora = I’m pretty
·         Tatu’ahe= tattoo, tatu=lit. armadillo, slang for vagina
o   Tattoo’s used to be seriously looked down upon in Paraguayan culture (aka having a tattoo= announcing you were a drug dealer). Things have loosened up a bit recently, but volunteers are still encouraged to keep tattoos covered for a while in their communities, until the volunteer is more integrated. This is a difficult rule for many volunteers and came up during our training period a lot.
My unfortunate language classmate, teasing my female language teacher: “do you have a [thought he was saying] tattoo?”
Language teacher, attempting to turn this into an educational moment: “Yes.”
Classmate thinking he had discovered her dark side: “Where???”
(she can’t help but laugh, but doesn’t answer)
“where, where, where, where?”
Still laughing, points.
Classmate swears he will never speak Guarani again.